![]() ![]() Sometimes it’s okay to just enjoy little snip bits of history through the lens of a video game, or some other form of media. Not all history enthusiasts have to be professional historians who read manuscript after manuscript trying to decipher what exactly went on in the past. They were able to show me that learning is fun, no matter how cliché that may sound. Civilizationand Mystery Mountainhad more influence on me when it came to deciding to study history than any grade school history or social studies class. ![]() But games like Civilization, Assassin’s Creed and many others show that it is possible to have historic elements in a game that might spark an interest in their players for history. Video games are difficult to make educational due to their tendency to favour gameplay mechanics, graphics, story, and the interactive ‘fun’ value over educational value. I believe that video games are a great way to teach anyone about history while they also have fun. They had even more historical basis than Civilization, but are far more obscure. That game, as well as many more, helped me through elementary school. For example, I played a game called JumpStart 3rdGrade: Mystery Mountain, in which the ‘villain’ sends back her robots to the past to try to alter the past, and the player has to solve puzzle, learn about history and ultimately bring all the robots back from the past. However, when I was a kid, my parents bought me all kinds of educational video games. I play video games multiple times a week, and almost none of them have anything to do with history or have any real educational aspect to them on the surface level. So, while all of this information is interesting and thought provoking, it would be nothing without a “so what now?” conclusion. Players can choose to fight any battle they chose, go to war with whomever they please, and to advance technology at whatever rate they chose. In Civilization’s case, the game play is not really historic at all. Based or grounded in history does not mean they are always extremely accurate. However, video games are often only good if they are extremely interactive, and therefore do lose some of their historic facts along the way. Regarding the first, I believe that all video games based in history allow for players to live out a piece of history and engage with it, making it fun and possibly even teaching them something. According to an article on, Civilizationis able to “ historical characters to life in a fantastically engaging fashion that a dusty old textbook never could”, however it loses historic value due to “its misrepresentation of historical cause and effect.” I completely agree with these statements. It gives the players real historic characters and real civilizations and allows them to mold them in the way they want. The reason Civilizationworks as a video game based in history is because it allows the player to make their own history. There is no real way of knowing if a Japanese Samurai could beat a Viking in one-on-one combat, and yet the Civilization games allow us to play out that scenario. This, of course, was due to the fact that my dad’s favourite country to play as was Germany and ironically, this led to me learning the least about Germany. They were always the strongest, smartest, fastest and had the most land around the world. For example: in my dad’s playthroughs, Germany always won everything. There were some things that it taught me that were not true. I quickly learned what it meant to conquer other nations and how those with better technologies were usually the ones to win wars. ![]() This game was my introduction into many historical concepts, such as Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan. Originally released in 2008, Sid Meier and 2K games made it available on multiple platforms, including PlayStation 3, which was my dad’s choice of console. ![]() The Civilizationgame he played the longest in my lifetime was Civilization Revolution. I was too young to comprehend what it was, but I knew I enjoyed the music, and the colours and maps fascinated me. One of the first video games I remember watching my father play was Sid Meier’s Civilization. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |